I don’t know the right way to be in this complicated, sometimes fragile world, but I know that if you’ve found it: if you definitively figured out a right way, that seems a sure sign something is wrong. My version of the good is all about having enough uncertainty to stay humble, but not so much that you lack direction or, you know, go insane.

To see ourselves (not the collective ourselves, but the personal) in all our weakness, and to say that we can be brave and step forward tentatively, but never with such certainty we squash the parallel hopes of those who walk alongside us. I never want to be the one who has it all together, because that is the place that excludes the rest of us.

On labels: mother, wife, unschooler, permaculture, Christian, zero waste, farmer, daughter, researcher, activist, friend. I know for certain these are all spheres of huge importance to me, and that I cannot fully inhabit all these identities or knowledges instantaneously or simultaneously. Though perhaps I will have the opportunity to if I am lucky enough to grow really, really old.

But for now: I know that I can’t produce my own food and gently support my kids in self-led learning while caring for my community and supporting myself and my family on an entirely moral, non-exploitatative and fair income stream (doing altruistically motivated, moral and mutually helpful research, or selling enough plants to earn an income but not creating plastic waste while paying our two staff members adequately without making it harder for our neighbouring nurseries to function). (and a million other tensions: bearing 3 kids in a world of climate change, flying to Korea to visit family...or not)

It's a lot, right? But those are the folds-- like villi in our intestines, the surface area if you zoom in enough is infinite, and you cannot be zoomed in and yet see all the folds at once. Family and community helps- family that is willing to come alongside and do bits of things that fit with their own vision of where they are and where they are going. One priority has to be embedded in us, like muscle memory— we have to inhabit one thing so much that it becomes second nature… then another thing, perhaps. In the interim— before I have that layer, the best I can do is to be honest about it. I remember a few years I had a bit of an academic crush on a great economic philosopher, a very famous woman, and I bent over backwards to attend a conference where she was speaking. It was terrible. She came from the U.S. to Cape Town, and deeply misread the circumstances in which we lived and couldn’t understand or imagine another way, yet was fully assured of her own genius. Which didn’t diminish her contribution or her work, but reinforced my sense that we cannot be whole in every sphere. None of us needs a pedestal.

That is, we cannot be right about everything.

We can be brave and say that we do not understand the lives and experiences of all people. That is not to say we give up our perspective, but that we try our best to inhabit and understand the experiences of others, including narratives where we are cast as the bad guy. A dear friend with a very different upbringing than mine once told me something deep: that shouting at a loved one is not always hurtful, and that one can be deeply hurtful without shouting. In my polite world, an alternate dimension (including as a parent) seemed to open up when I thought about that statement.

This idea may be hard to apply in a linear way to the political divisions in the U.S., or in South Africa, yet I think some bit of that does apply, particularly when someone proudly says they are non-racist or not patriarchal. In some ways where we are comfortable and wealthy, we have the comfort of saying the equivalent of “I never raised my voice” or “I always gave money” or “I learned and applied anti-colonial language,” or "I did better than most." It is too easy to cast ourselves as the consistent heroes of our stories. In some ways people like Trump and Zuma make it easier: you can feel superior and self-righteous just by telling the world that you don’t like sexual harassment or inciting racial violence, or by refraining from stealing billions in tax and being married to four people at once. It’s a very low bar. And it is always easier to articulate your rightness when you are already comfortable and have had a few evenings to think about your worldview with a diverse group of friends. It is pleasant and idealistic to embrace a vision for the world when you’re not the one it’s experimenting with, the one who has been discarded by colonialism or capitalism or both, time and time again.

Which is to say, I think we need to have a higher bar, but also be humble about our virtually infinite blindness. I deeply desire a society that cares for the poor, that is inclusive and generous and principled and safe and sustainable and transparent. And yet: I have layers and layers that are none of those things, does none of those things. Yet. It is disingenuous to argue for your vision of the world without acknowledging your blind spots or actually doing the work of changing and experiencing the deep limitations of our capacity to change.

In the world of morality and faith, I don’t really think we should rank or feel that we are not measuring up. I think we can say: we are finite— there are ways in which we are not acting rightly, and we can do better, slowly (perhaps prayerfully)— one step forward, one sickness or financial emergency and we slide back— but we do not measure the progress exactly. We can check ourselves on the direction and forsake the judgement. We are not seeking redemption through our actions. We are redeemed already, we are simply doing our best with the gifts we have, in our small corner.

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

I got bitten by a Cape cobra IN THE CAR last week. Even our car is a healthy ecosystem for wildlife. This is the food chain: old apple cores and banana peels ---- cockroaches and mice-- CAPE COBRA. Right? Right. I'm not feeling great, but then I'm alive so that's quite a good thing given the alternative. Ok, it hasn't been positively identified as a Cape Cobra because WE STILL DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS (come for a visit, guys!), but it's a fairly large venomous snake with fangs that causes vomiting and shaking so unless it's someone's exotic pet, it was a cobra.

Not a cobra: tortoise is back, and has a girlfriend. Ok we've never seen them together but hopefully they sense the presence of the other and will be cosmically drawn together for the sake of my seeing baby tortoises on our property. Because nature is all about me.

This, together with other family health issues that aren't mine to talk about, means we're still having a relatively tough time of it, despite our circumstances being rather lovely in many ways.

So I wanted to reflect a little on perspectives on homesteading: getting sick, experiencing unpredictable difficult events, living "healthy," all that stuff. Spoiler alert: I am still sold on homesteading, because I'm stubborn like that.

Here's the thing: I don't think homesteading protects you from the possibility of illness or weird catastrophic events, in the same way that being Christian doesn't protect you from sucky things happening to you. Yet connecting with God during sucky things seems to matter at some deep level-- in helping us avoid jadedness and cynicism and closedness. Not that connecting with God is the same as homesteading. Anyway.

Maybe homesteaders are a little less prone to allergies or IBS or cancer or whatever, or maybe we aren't. Either way, the reality is that bad stuff, including illness, happens. If you haven't already noticed, I don't like the narrative that reaches for homesteading (or worse, "clean eating") as a utopian solution to all our problems. I often watch videos about people turning to homesteading because of health issues, and as much as I like those videos, I don't think that sets up beginners' expectations appropriately. Homesteading is hard and messy. Yet I think, if you can, growing stuff-- especially as hipsters/millennials/people with day jobs-- having your energy directed towards growing things-- even when you can't always avoid illness or hard times-- is a step in the right direction.

I think it is more than a step in the right direction for you as an individual or family, it's a step for communities. Chances are, your family avoiding getting sick from glyphosate because you're growing your own happy organic food probably won't outweigh the discomfort you're likely to experience from mosquitoes that time you forgot about the liquid fertilizer, or the diarrhaea you got from questionable hygiene practices in your garden, or the time a COBRA BIT YOU IN THE CAR. Yet I feel, collectively, those kinds of discomfort are qualitatively better than the ones that derive from the world where we buy everything from Amazon-- and the illness derived from a rushed, unhealthy system that we buy into. At least for me, though I still do a lot of rushing.

A couple of days ago, when I didn't have any energy to do something fun with the kids (cobra bite), we watched a documentary of the 2004 Tsunami. It was totally inappropriate for kids at some level (cobra bite), but in another way it was not as emotionally difficult to see because the event was so clearly beyond the power of humans. If I showed them something as graphic about war, it would feel deeply different (though there will be a time for that, probably). It's not exactly analogous to homesteading, perhaps, but sometimes I think that when bad things happen while homesteading, it's hard, but it's not the same kind of hardness. It's not the hardness that comes as a product of an exploitative system.

Now, you might say the logic of this is off if you apply it to the cobra situation, given that there wouldn't have been a cobra in the car in the first place if we weren't homesteading. You're right of course- but I reckon if you're not doing this you're doing something else- driving a long way to work where you might have an accident, etc. etc. You may even rightly argue that we may be able to avoid a lot of risk simply by staying in the U.S., and I think that's true. Yet I don't think homesteading, or staying or leaving, should be about avoiding risk or suffering. Those are a given. I think it should be about building something meaningful-- and perhaps even finding ways to meaningfully give up some of the power that comes of whiteness, savings and education-- within the constraints of our knowledge and resources.

The thing I've found growing things is that slowly, we speak from a place of deeper knowledge. Not that growing things is the same everywhere, or that our circumstances are at all similar to yours. But anyway, here's to building together, wherever we are in the world!

The artist at work.

Silvermine (with spongebob??)

Noah is a finalist for a dog food ad to help raise money for our local dog rescue, where he trains puppies.

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

We organize a small food co-op which involves buying direct from farmers/small businesses (and a couple of medium sized businesses), at wholesale prices. Once a month, we supply this food to order, to about 30 families.

We have a few motivations for running the group (which is one amongst quite a few such groups around the city): thinking about how to support access to healthier food, more ethical food, food that supports more sustainable farming practices, food that focuses on short supply chains where possible, rather than giving all power and money to distribution channels.

It’s evolving: we don’t supply everything we’d like to, and not everything we supply is from small farmers, or local, or organic (it is usually at least one, often two, of the three). The balance of the amount of time we have, the relationship we have with suppliers, the reality that we eat oats and certain legumes even though they’re not really grown in South Africa for human consumption, etc. It’s a great learning experience for us, and I know much more about the South African food system than I did a couple of years ago.

I’m a bit nervous about the exclusivity that such a group may foster, especially at a time when money and health are closely tied together (i.e. the wealthy eating from a growing set of ever-more-nutritious [add your adjective here] healthy foods, while the impoverished eat from a shrinking set of ever-less-nourishing foods). I’m not quite sure how to navigate this dynamic, except to name it and commit to figuring out what food attributes seem important to our family, and then think more about how to make these attributes a less exclusive option.

One question we get a lot is about whether the products we supply are non-GMO. In fact, we have some foods that suppliers proudly declare “non-GMO” even though there is no GMO version of that particular crop (various legumes, popcorn are often-labelled “Non-GMO” despite the fact that South Africa does not have GMO versions). I find these labels misleading. These labels suggest that GM foods are a key evil to organize around (and implicitly, that they’re hard to avoid if you do want to do so). I get the sense that label is added as a value statement, because the product isn’t certified organic, and the supplier wants to put something to show values, even when the product is coming from a large farm in Turkey (in the case of many legumes) or Australia (in the case of oats).

So I’ve been looking a bit more into GM foods in South Africa, as I think the GMO conversation can become a distraction (or sometimes shorthand) for a much more complex set of issues within our food system. It can be quite difficult to find trustworthy, neutral resources on GM foods: large commercial farmers put out information in favour of genetic modification* and rarely acknowledge downsides in a serious way. On the other hand, there is a also a fairly large anti-GMO lobby that tends to be quite sensationalist, without necessarily having much evidence to support their position— Mercola and the Weston A. Price Foundation are two groups that I’d consider examples of this category, where their articles are widely referenced on SA health sites, but if you follow the citations back to the actual research, there is a confusing mix of good science and pseudoscience published in dodgy journals (I say this with sadness because I like Nourishing traditions/Weston A. Price type stuff quite a lot).

So, I’ve been digging through journal articles to learn more, in the hopes it can help us navigate who we buy from, how we ask about their product claims, and how we think about good food more generally:

How widespread are GMO foods in South Africa?
GM technology is expensive and tends to be developed mainly for cash crops in very large scale production. There are three GM crops in commercial production in South Africa: Maize (not popcorn), cotton, and soya/soy— if you consume maize or soy you’re likely eating a GM crop, as a large share of the market is GM. The two main modifications of these crops is herbicide resistance- which is where the glyphosate concern comes in, and insertion of the BT gene which kills a specific corn pest- this is where pesticide resistance comes in. It’s not clear if any canola on the market is currently GM-- there may be a little, or there may in the future. There’s also interest in the development of GM sugarcane, and talk of GM wine yeast. Legumes (excluding soy) are never GM, and nor is oats (i.e. there is no GM version in commercial production anywhere in the world).

Maize and soy crops affect a wider array of foods because they are an important part of animal feed and processed food (partly because they are grown so cheaply and on such a large scale). For farmers farming chickens and livestock, unless they have a huge amount of space, it becomes fairly difficult to avoid GM animal feed. Soy lecithin is part of most chocolate products, and corn starch is also widely used as a thickener.What issues with GMO seem most important to think about?

First off, I think it’s valuable to disaggregate the potential issues with GM foods, NOT to stoke vague fears and start labelling everything “non-GMO,” even when there is no GM version of that food. The gene transfer itself is potentially distracting as an issue: It is too easy for the farming tech giants to brush off unsubstantiated claims about the health effects of GM foods (and indeed, those claims are largely unsubstantiated to date).

The broader— much more substantive I think— issue is that large commercial farms are designed to focus entirely on profit, at the expense of soil health or broader ecology. GM crops supports a type of farming that depends heavily on fossil fuels and very large acreage of single crops. In turn, this type of farming shapes our diets in important ways: they affect the soil our food draws nutrients from, and shapes the affordability of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods on the shelves of our supermarkets. So GM crops form one part of that important discussion of food as a commodity.

Some potential issues with GM crops that seem to be borne out in the literature:

More broadly, GM foods undermine food sovereignty to the extent that farmers who used to own their seeds are increasingly pressed to purchase seeds. The production of cheap staples of soy and corn encourages ever-more concentrated animal operations, where feed is bought in— and this is driven the world's increasing demand for animal products.GM crops often present technological fixes to much broader, more complex issues— e.g. yield can be improved by supporting smaller farms in improving their soil over several years. However, supporting smaller farms is incredibly complex: markets favor bigger farms, because everyone (big or small) is forced to compete on equal footing, so smaller farms need a really wide range of supportive mechanisms to get their products to customers while earning a reasonable living.

So the issues with GM foods are intertwined with broader systemic issues in our food system. I am convinced that food should not be a commodity traded like any other commodity on the open market, because when it is, the costs to environment or health become invisible, and it is very difficult for impoverished people (and small scale farmers) to survive/make a living. It is too easy for bullies to monopolize farming practices for their own gain, even though it’s apparent that this style of farming cannot feed the world.

So I think it’s valuable to say what/how we WANT our farmers to be growing, to articulate how we will support small and medium scale farmers, and to figure out in very practical terms how to do that, perhaps by bypassing existing structures (supermarkets) as well as by actively creating alternatives.
Relationships with farmers are a key part of this: if we are not producing the food ourselves we need to learn about the priorities and logic of those who do, so that we can make alternatives viable for them. The thing is, small and medium scale farms are competing against larger operations, and it’s an incredibly difficult competition to be a part of, because ecological damage/nutrient density is not factored into price.

One thing I’m always afraid of is making farmers claim to be something they’re not, because that’s what this emerging niche market demands. This creates false expectations for emergent farmers as well as consumers, because consumers think that they can request something that is terribly difficult to actually supply and still make a living, at least for the first five years of farming. Sustainability is not just about the earth’s resources, it is also about Human Resources: all too often, in order to compete, farmers are faced with the choice to either pay their workers too little to sustain them and their families, or burn themselves out.How we navigate GM foods in our family

We generally don't eat much processed food in our family (a goal is to bypass supermarkets completely by year-end), and this is where one would eat GM foods. I try to acknowledge that a large range of foods are enjoyable to eat, and I try to think with gratitude about the farmer/worker growing our food, no matter how far removed s/he is from us. On the occasions where we consume processed food, I try to enjoy the food rather than panic, and I try to see if there are lesser evils (e.g. chips from a smaller company with fewer ingredients). I don't really worry about these occasions, I see them as learning experiences for my kids who are growing up in a big, beautiful, world where we are often the odd ones out. I focus on making it possible and pleasurable for our family to eat from scratch most of the time, for the long-term. While large scale systems are at fault (one could argue that the evil is unleashed when a company becomes an entity), I doubt that specific farmers, scientists, or even specific company employees, are deliberate villains. I tend to think that we need margin to eat well and to think of alternative models (at the expense of our work and/or time and/or our money).

On our small permaculture farm we buy in supplemental feed (which inevitably contains GM maize) for our chickens and ducks. We also grow organic barley micro greens for them. Our farm can support a larger number of free range ducks and chickens (currently around 25 chickens and 10 ducks) if mixed fowl feed is a supplemental option, because we don’t have time to do enough barley micro greens and there’s not enough diversity in the farm to support the chickens and ducks without supplemental feed (we’ve tried— using chickens to process compost was a useful supplemental feed option but wasn’t enough).So, the chickens and ducks obtain much, but not all, of their nutrients and calories from eating scraps, weeds, insects, and having supplemental barley sprouts when I have enough time to grow them consistently. I.e. they’re consuming about 15% of their overall diet in supplemental grain, which is partly corn. We even soak the mixed feed because I read somewhere that that helps with digestibility. I think the supplemental feed improves their health (they know they have enough food, which is important for preventing annoying chicken behaviour, which is not pretty). The eggs we consume have a very low carbon footprint relative to others. We have extremely happy chickens, though my time with chickens suggests they are not terribly sentient. Let's just say they get to live free as chickens.

The factors shaping our decision-making include time, best use of land, costs, etc. (and where we are in our own learning and experience). And the fact that I really like the guy who drops off grain for us each month, and that it takes a while to be brave enough to ask him about alternative feeds. I suspect that as we learn and our farm improves, our need for this supplemental feed will fall away— our animals don’t particularly like the corn in the feed, anyway. Our experience is shared just to highlight that farmers’ priorities should not be judged too quickly; as far as possible, they should be carefully understood (and vice versa), to promote transparency and common ground.Some last thoughts (sorry this is so long)

As our co-op tries to buy direct from farmers, knowing how hard it is to make a living: I want to focus on learning (in an open interested way) about how farmers cultivate their soil, about how they prioritize, about how they improve the lives of their farm workers. That is, I do want accountability.

To me, this type of accountability is much more important than asking more stark "do you ever" questions. Open and interested questions may lead to increased knowledge about sustainable food practices and supporting common priorities. On the other hand, avoiding farms where GM feed is used may squeeze out other priorities, because of how difficult it is to be profitable. Over time, when other priorities are realized, it becomes easier to consider the issue of GM feed. Taken alone, a one-to-one substitution of non-GM feed, for example, would not necessarily result in a substantive benefit (just an expense), whereas gradually building up the soil and building capacity to grow alternative feed on site, may facilitate a more sustainable and resilient system.

Small farmers fight an uphill battle and my sense from dealing with small farmers and companies is that if they seem to be perfect (or worse, put in a lot of effort to seeming perfect), there's often something that we're not seeing.

If we return to the issue of divergent diets between wealthy and impoverished South Africans, one key goal would be supporting suppliers/farmers in providing viable, dignified livelihoods for themselves and their workers, while caring for their soil and their animals. Supporting sustainable livelihoods through farming is an important piece of facing up to inequality. Promoting healthy soil and healthy workers when we buy from farmers and suppliers, and finding ways to support reasonably diverse, relatively unprocessed diets, to me goes a long way to creating a better food system. GM crops are a symptom of problems in our food system (where it is very hard to make a living unless you go big and farm a certain way), and we need to be thinking of the illness itself.

*[This publication does a fairly good job of laying out some of the evidence simply, though I balk at the continued mention of food security, since in South Africa food security is an issue of access, not overall supply, and there’s virtually no evidence that GM crops make nutritious foods more affordable.]